Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization

The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was a fascist political party that existed in Bulgaria and Macedonia from 1893 to 1991. The party was founded as a revolutionary national liberation movement in Salonica (Thessaloniki, Greece) in 1893 with the goal of liberating the Macedonia and Adrianople regions from the Ottoman Empire, and the IMRO began a guerrilla campaign in 1896. In 1903, IMRO launched an uprising that was brutally crushed by the Ottoman military, and IMRO decided to use terrorist tactics against civilians. During the Balkan Wars and World War I, IMRO decided to support Bulgarian expansion instead of autonomism, supporting the Bulgarian takeover of Thrace and Macedonia. After World War I, IMRO launched raids into Yugoslavia and Greece from Bulgaria, leading to the Bulgarian government signing a treaty with Yugoslavia in 1923 that led to Bulgaria suppressing the IMRO. The group assassinated Bulgarian prime minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski, and the Greek Army launched a failed 1925 invasion of Bulgaria at Petrich, halted by a League of Nations order. After the 1934 Zveno coup, IMRO was reduced to a marginal phenomenon by the military government, and the movement would create the right-wing IMRO - Bulgarian National Movement in 1991.